National Enforcement Priorities for animal feed and food hygiene

We produce the National Enforcement Priorities (NEPs) for food and animal feed hygiene. These assist Local Authorities and businesses in maintaining standards and safeguarding public health.

The National Enforcement Priorities are developed annually in consultation with

- Local authority (LA) representatives
- National trading Standards (NTS)
- Regional Feed Leads
- National Agriculture Panel (NAP) members
- National Animal Feed at Ports Panel (NAFPP) members

**Objectives**

Incorporating the NEPs into a programme of official controls helps drive compliance by Feed Business Operators (FeBOs) through enforcement.

The objectives of the priorities are to:

- drive an intelligence led approach to official controls, focusing resources on higher risk and non-compliant business, placing an increased focus on outcomes
- maintain a level playing field for honest and diligent food and feed businesses, which is in the interests of industry as a whole
- reduce unnecessary burdens on business by focusing LA activity on agreed areas of greatest threat to public and animal health
- create a flexible and intelligence-led approach to interventions, placing an increased focus on outcomes
- realise our strategic goal of ‘Food We Can Trust’ and drive up the quality and consistency of official controls

Legislation and guidance to support local authorities to embed these priorities within their annual plan of official feed and food controls, can be found within the NEPs documents.